There are many problems unique to electric vehicles, oftentimes due to the presence of large and/or numerous batteries used to power the electric motor and other components of the vehicle. These batteries are often bulky, and add significant weight to the vehicles. These considerations present challenges in designing a particularly efficient and practical electrical vehicle. Additionally, these batteries may be particularly susceptible to damage during a collision. Damage to a battery may be especially dangerous by presenting a fire and/or corrosive hazard. As such, protecting the batteries from damage remains a difficult challenge unique to the field of electric vehicles.
Vehicle manufacturers have added a number of new structural features to vehicles to improve safety and/or performance. Many of these structural features are applicable to electric, hybrid, and non-electric vehicles equally, while others place a greater emphasis on the vehicle motor type, such as a vehicle base plate with increased thickness for protecting an electric car battery over a specific region of the vehicle. Structural improvements that increase either safety or performance without a significant compromise of the other remain important objectives of vehicle manufacturers.
Electric vehicles are becoming an increasingly viable alternative to traditional vehicles with internal combustion engines. Electric vehicles may have advantages in their compactness, simplicity of design, and in being potentially more environmentally friendly depending on the means by which the electricity used in the vehicle was originally generated. The prospect of using renewable energy sources to power automobiles in place of gasoline has obvious advantages as oil reserves across the globe become increasingly depleted.